<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>the future by zhuzhubi</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833209">the future</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhuzhubi/pseuds/zhuzhubi'>zhuzhubi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Criminal Minds (US TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Make-up, Mild Angst, Post-Break Up, sorta - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:22:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,231</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833209</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhuzhubi/pseuds/zhuzhubi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>you always let spencer dream, even when you didn’t believe his dreams could actually come true. he proves you wrong</p><p>(or, reader is spencer’s ex from college/grad school. they run into each other years later when reader is being interviewed for a case, and reader is surprised to find out that spencer actually became an fbi agent)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Spencer Reid/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the future</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>on tumblr @zhuzhubii</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Six years ago</em>
</p><p>He has something on his mind, you can tell. You can see the weight of a decision in the crease of his brow, the lip between his teeth. You can see it in the way he rolls his pen back and forth between his fingertips, staring off into the stacks as if the long rows of textbooks have an answer hidden in the pages, hidden between creased paper and scrawled notes. </p><p>Maybe they do, for him. He sees many things, many patterns and logics and connections, that others don’t - he’s twenty-one short years old and half-way through his third PhD, an anomaly in every sense of the word. And yet, he’s only human. He seeks solace in textbooks and amassing knowledge, hiding behind Fourier series and vector fields and beta elimination, but even he doesn’t have all the answers. He doesn’t have the answer he came to Caltech looking for.</p><p>(Even after three years and countless all-nighters between the two of you, you’re still not sure what exactly it is that he’s looking for. You suspect it has to do with the psychology papers he reads in his spare time, with the pages of postage stamps and piles of unsent letters addressed to -</p><p>You made the mistake once of asking Spencer about his mother. It was in a soft moment together, laying next to him under the covers, squished too close together on the bed in your dorm room. His breath was warm against your cheek, his bare skin hot against yours, his worry about your roommate coming back a fleeting thought easily pushed aside with fingers through his hair and a kiss to his neck.</p><p>It was then that you asked him. Or it was then the words slipped out, rather.</p><p>“So I’ve been thinking…spring break’s just a few weeks away and I thought it might be nice for us to spend it in Vegas? You know - see the sights, sneak into casinos, cheat at poker?”</p><p>He was tense beneath you and you should have taken it as it was - a silent desire to drop this line of conversation. But you were only eighteen then, you’d only been together a few months. You couldn’t read his body as you can now, and you pressed on in your naive desire.</p><p>“You could…introduce me to your mom?”</p><p>You’ll never forget his sharp inhale at the words, the way he practically pushed you off of him in his haste to get up. He pulled his clothes back on as quickly as he could as you pulled the covers tight around your shoulders, suddenly hyper-aware of your nakedness even in the dark.</p><p>“Spencer, what’s wrong?” you remember asking him, “Is there…is something <em>wrong</em> with your mother?”</p><p>It was a bad choice of words and you knew it, wincing and sucking in a breath of your own, wishing you could take it back. He froze half-way through buttoning up his shirt, his fingers hovering over the patterned fabric. He was facing away from you, but you could hear the wet shudder in his breath in the pause.</p><p>And then he let out an unsteady exhale, his hands quivering as he continued to do up his shirt. “No,” he said, no uncertainty in his voice, “There is <em>nothing</em> wrong with my mother.”</p><p>But he turned to face you for just a moment, his eyes ghosting over yours before he turned away once again, stumbling out the door with a quick, “See you in the morning.”</p><p>You never brought it up again after that - partially because you knew he didn’t want to talk about it, and partially because you didn’t know how. You try not to pry because even after being together for nearly three years, Spencer’s still an incredibly private person. So you let yourself forget about it, as best you can at least. You skirt around the topic of his mother, you tell yourself that she’s probably fine, that some people just aren’t very close to their parents.</p><p>You know it’s not true, because of the stacks of handwritten letters. You know it’s not true because you remember the tears in his eyes as he turned for the door)</p><p>You wonder sometimes if he’s trying to <em>fix</em> his mother. You don’t think it’s possible, at least not within her lifetime, but you vow to never shoot down his hopes. If he needs a fantasy to cling to, then so be it - who are you to take that away from him?</p><p>You wonder if that’s what he’s thinking about now. You wonder as his eyes drift over to the psychology section once again, as he worries at his lip and taps his pen.</p><p>“Ethan…,” he starts, “Ethan dragged me to this seminar yesterday. It was…it was by this man named Jason Gideon, he’s a recruiter for the FBI.”</p><p>It’s not what you were expecting to hear at all, and you just barely manage to contain your surprise. “Oh?” you manage, praying that the squeak in your voice isn’t too obvious.</p><p>He’s too caught up in his head to notice at all. “I went up to talk to him after the seminar and he…,” Spencer coughs, “he invited me to eat lunch with him. So…I went. And we talked for a bit about those new psychology studies I’ve been reading up on lately - you know, the ones I showed you last week?”</p><p>He glances towards you for a moment and you nod, masking your hesitation as you lean towards him and place a comforting hand on his thigh. Spencer’s lips twitch upwards into a smile and he places his own hand over yours, staring down at it as he traces patterns with his fingertips.</p><p>“After a while,” he continues, “he asked me if I’d ever thought about working for the FBI. And of course I said no because…well because I hadn’t. And because…well, look at me! I’m not exactly the ideal candidate for an agent - I mean, can you even imagine me with a gun?”</p><p>“No,” you chuckle and Spencer smiles, shaking his head in disbelief at the mere thought of himself shooting a gun.</p><p>“But then he…he said that he’d heard about me from one of my professors, that the Bureau could really use a mind like mine. That I could…that I could help a lot of people if I joined his team. He said that there’s a place for me at the Bureau once I finish this degree.”</p><p>And there’s something like desire in his voice, something like longing. Something…something driven like you’ve never heard in his voice before. But you push it to the back of your mind because there’s no way, right? Spencer Reid…as an <em>agent?</em> It would never work, you’re sure of it.</p><p>But you promised a long time ago that you’d let him dream. So even though you don’t really believe that it’ll work out, you squeeze his hand and say, “That sounds like an amazing opportunity. I think you should go for it.”</p><p>…</p><p>
  <em>Now</em>
</p><p>“Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?” the dark-haired woman across from you asks, her voice infuriatingly soft and gentle. </p><p>“No, I’m fine,” you reply, staring down at your hands as they tangle together in your lap, “I just want to get this over with.”</p><p>“Alright,” she says in that voice. She pauses for a moment before continuing, presumably to give you some time to breathe. It helps. It helps, and you hate that it helps. You hate that you need something that helps because needing something implies that -</p><p>“We’re going to need to know everything that you can tell us about Katherine - anything you can think of, no matter how small, could help us find her. Do you understand?”</p><p>You close your eyes for a moment to steel yourself, wishing this wasn’t happening but knowing that wishing achieves nothing at all. You take a deep breath, hold in one two three four and then exhale -</p><p>“I understand. Now ask your questions so you can catch this sonofabitch. Find my best friend. Find Katherine.”</p><p>…</p><p>The woman lets you have a moment alone in the room after the interview is over. She leaves you with stale coffee you didn’t ask for and racing thoughts about your friend. You won’t drink it, but it feels nice to have something warm under your palms. Something to help ground you against the knowledge of what they aren’t telling you - the conspicuous way the woman avoided the hard questions.</p><p>
  <em>What did he do to the other girls? Is he going to do the same to her?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>How long do we have before he kills her?</em>
</p><p>You’re not sure if knowing would be worse than the uncertainty, but you’re grateful that she didn’t answer. Not knowing allows you to live in limbo, to pretend for just a little longer that everything is fine, that the bad things will go away if you just try your best to forget about them.</p><p>You’re not supposed to be doing that anymore. It’s one of your faults - you’re painfully bad at facing things head on, at saying the things that need to be said even when it’s hard. </p><p>Six years ago, your maladaptive need to keep everyone comfortable blew up in your face. You could never address anything deeper than the comfortable, the superficial, and it cost you your relationship - it drove a rift between the two of you. You resented him for being too closed off and never really wanting to talk, and he resented you for not caring enough to ask him about his problems. Of course neither of you was right, you know that now. You both just got too wrapped up in your own heads, in your own false assumptions about one another -</p><p>You push yourself to your feet and throw out the coffee, chasing away thoughts of the past because you don’t want to think about them anymore, pointedly ignoring the irony in the sentiment. Your best friend has been kidnapped, you’re allowed a little bitterness.</p><p>You stew in bitterness because it’s better than tears. Or maybe not better, but at least bitterness is easier to swallow. </p><p>It’s bitterness you’re thinking about as you push your way out of the room and start walking down the hall, trying to remember what twists and turns the woman took as she led you here. And then you hear it - hear a voice so familiar and so unexpected that you’re half-convinced it’s a hallucination.</p><p>“JJ and I found something interesting at the crime scene. Here, take a look at this -”</p><p>“Spencer?” the name slips out of your mouth before you can stop it, the taste like foreign candy on your tongue - strange in many ways, and yet still achingly sweet and familiar.</p><p>A man looks up, and there he is - his hair is different than you remember, but that’s Spencer Reid in all his glory. He blinks at you for a second, brings a hand up to clear his eyes as if he can’t quite believe what they’re telling him. And then, after a pause just long enough to be awkward, he whispers, “(y/n)?”</p><p>You don’t know what comes over you, if it’s the stress or the surprise, but you find yourself hugging him all of the sudden. He’s gained weight since you last saw him - still thin, but not painfully so like he was at twenty-one. His arms are warm when he tentatively brings them up to comfort you, tracing patterns over your back just like he always did does.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” you mumble into his chest, pulling back just enough to look into his eyes.</p><p>He blinks at you, letting out an awkward cough and looking everywhere but your eyes, “I, um, I work here. Well, not here here, exactly. I mean I - um, I work…I work for the Bureau. I’m in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, the position Jason Gideon wanted me for.”</p><p>And now it’s your turn to blink in shock. “You…you actually did it,” you whisper in wonder.</p><p>“Yeah, I…,” he swallows, “I went for it. Just like you said I should.”</p><p>You’re just trying to come up with a response to that when a stern-looking man comes rushing around the corner with a hurried, “Conference room, now,” before disappearing behind a closed door.</p><p>The dark-haired agent follows immediately, but Spencer pauses - he tightens his grasp around you and tilts his head to the side in a silent question.</p><p>“Go,” you tell him, “We can talk later. Your team needs you - find Katherine.”</p><p>He hesitates for a moment more, then gives you one last squeeze before dropping his arms and stumbling through the door. You’re reminded of another time he hurried away from you, of another time he left in a cacophony of clumsy limbs. But this time there are no tears in his eyes as he disappears through the door, just the soft grace of a smile pulling at his lips.</p><p>And you’re still worried about Katherine, you’re still afraid about how all of this will turn out. But a long time ago you told yourself that you’d let Spencer hope, that you’d let him believe in a better future in order to make it through the reality of now. Maybe it’s time you did the same for yourself.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>